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Electron Microscope Facility

The EM Facility is an institutional resource to meet the electron microscopy needs of faculty, staff and students of the Dartmouth College community, including the College, Thayer School of Engineering, the Dartmouth Medical School, and the Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center. The instruments are housed in the EM wing of Remsen. Because the facility is intended to provide service to all the campus, yet has limited personnel, a major effort is made to provide training in the use of appropriate instruments to enable users to do their own microscopy. In addition to this training, there will be service assistance available for those unable to spend time on the microscopes, and for processing of biopsy samples from DHMC.

Training

The reason for having an electron microscope facility is to enable members of the Dartmouth community to use the microscopes. Training of individual researchers, including faculty, staff and students (graduate students with approval from their advisors), will be scheduled on a demand basis. In order to best utilize the time of the E.M. Lab staff a potential user may be asked to wait a short time until two or three persons can be trained at the same time. All users of the Dartmouth EM Facility must be approved by the Facility Director prior to using any of the instruments. This prior approval includes those who have been trained elsewhere in electron microscopy. The intent is not to limit access, but to protect the instruments from possible damage. Contact the Director for detailed information regarding training. General training guidelines are included below, and are available on the Public file server.

Scheduling

Once a user is checked out for a particular instrument they will be entered into the NCCC CCOPS scheduling and billing system. This is an on line scheduler that enables users to schedule time without contacting Facility staff. The intent of the following rules is to ensure access to the instruments for the largest number of users, not to limit access.

In general, users may sign up for up to two sessions in advance no more than two weeks in advance. Sessions are typically 2-3 hours long. Should a longer session be needed, or more than the two sessions in advance, users should contact the Director and provide an explanation. If additional sessions have been booked that then interfere with other users access to the instruments, the Director will resolve any conflicts. When in doubt, please call in advance.

Training courses for academic credit

The EM Facility does not provide training for academic credit except in conjunction with faculty of particular departments. In this context, the EM Facility will provide technical training and assistance for undergraduate and graduate courses in electron microscopy. The Director and other Facility staff will be available for lectures and training as arranged with particular departments. Prior to planning a course that will require use of the microscopes or Facility staff, faculty are requested to contact the Director so scheduling can be arranged as early as possible.

Instructions

We have a page of instruction manuals with download links here. Most documentation, including instrument operation manuals, is available via SFTP from our server.